Full Circle
by Aethereale
Summary: Love doesn't always happen as we think it should, and sometimes the forces behind it are beyond our understanding. But then, some things were simply meant-to-be all along. JS!
1. Prologue and sorts

  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own or stake any claim to the Labyrinth or any of its characters, nope not one bit of it. They belong to the Henson Company. 

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**Pro****logue and sorts**

Sometimes there are no 'why's or 'how's about things. Some things simply are and should be accepted as such. The Labyrinth simply 'was', ruled by a man who simply 'is'. There is no rhyme or reason why Sarah caught his eye one day as he was flying about, something he was wont to do in fits of boredom. How can one not get bored with the tedious company that populated his kingdom? And so he flew.

There had been many silly girls carrying on with their silly dreams below his languid flights. Sarah carried on with her games, equally silly to common scrutiny, but Jareth's was uncommon. She loved books and their fantastic worlds, but this one in particular she happened on purely by chance. The shopkeeper had no inventory of it, it bore no trace of origin, no publisher, no author. One would have thought it had no history if its cover weren't faded and its pages yellowed. This was a book of what simply 'was', and offered no 'why's or 'how's about it, yet it was as old as the world its pages detailed. Perhaps he had placed it there on one of his wanderings, perhaps it sprung up out of sheer necessity, as we now know there is sometimes no rhyme or reason to things. However it is that these things may happen, it captured the heart of one Sarah Williams, 15, and quite propitiously for our oft-airborne Goblin King.

Jareth was a man of indeterminate years who has lived for an indeterminate time in an indeterminate world. I suppose it would be quite a lonely existence if no one knew or even believed you existed. Loneliness creeps in bitterness, and scorn is sure to follow. All he was, all he knew was cast aside as trifle foolishness, something for silly girls and their silly dreams. By all standards, that would diminish his kingdom and his rule to trifle foolishness as well. Quite something to embitter a man, more so a king!

He found distraction in Sarah, initially. She gave his kingdom and his rule validation, his sole advocate in this resplendent yet burgeoning woman. She was quite a bit older than the other silly girls he'd seen, but still carried on as all the others. However, rightly so, for the book that had so captured Sarah's heart was not like any other. Something about it cried out to her to never let it go, to hold on to the dream. Hold on, but for what? It can honestly be said that neither of them knew at this point, and to this there was a reason.

Jareth's distraction soon became his curiosity. Curiosity gave way to fascination, and in time, this grew to love. Love! The ultimate distraction; oh what had befallen our Goblin King! Such a thing might be cause to make one reckless or rash, there is a certain urgency to fresh love much like the crisp air that follows a spring storm. Ah! But there's that storm to be dealt with. For two such as Sarah and Jareth love will come, undeniably, powerfully, but that love must first come softly.

Days became weeks, weeks turned into months. Was there ever a man quite so smitten? Some would argue, but given Jareth's past and now his present, I would say not. So this was his 'business to attend to'? What his subjects would think if they saw this side of him (of course they wouldn't!). He would reserve this for her and only her. He ached to be for her more than even she knew she yearned for.

She was a carefree dreamer but his dream reigned in her heart. He, the enduring ruler, found himself subject to, lost in the sea of her eyes. As compelling as their congruity may appear, their sparks could ignite a firestorm. But it had to start somewhere, so Jareth let her come to him in her own time. She would know when, it would come to her, some things just had to be so. And so he flew. Exhuberance replaced mundanity, and his once aimless flights now became pointedly resolute. Oh, what one silly girl could do him.

It did come to her as he knew it would. One night in exasperation yet only half-aware, though at least half, she took her step and said her words. To this half there, too, was a reason. If only poor Sarah could grasp the enormity of her newfound realization. These 'certain powers' were never meant for what she did with them, but that was the ignorance of the impulsive and unmindful child in her.

From here you know the story, well, most of it. For his intents and purposes, this night would have been their union. The night, however, blew in cold truth. To her it was a broken dream, which may as well have been a broken heart if not for the silly child in her. To him a broken heart, which was his dearest, and only, dream. All was not lost!

This is where we begin.


	2. Love between the stars

  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own or stake any claim to the Labyrinth or any of its characters, nope not one bit of it. They belong to the Henson Company. 

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**Love between the stars**

His subjects caught wind of what had befallen their king, and to them this was a travesty. It was their influence behind the intent of her words, and the words themselves, but neither of them would ever become aware of this betrayal.

Life was not fair, not even dreams. Her dream would not bow to her will nor would she to his. They were at an impasse. Of the countless ways their story could play out, it nonetheless did.

# # #

His pride would have kept him away, but love can make a fool of even the most hardhearted. Sarah saw him at her window that night. She knew it was Jareth, and she watched him as he watched her. From the moment of his arrival until she drifted off their eyes remained locked, their gazes fixed with a ferocity that stung their hearts. And he came the next and every night thereafter. Each night as she met his gaze something within her refused to relinquish it. As they were bound by each other's eyes a myriad of emotions flowed between them: frustration, wariness, awe most assuredly, pleading, hope, comfort, and yet a strange and bitter sadness, such a sad, sad love. Periodically you could see her mouth gasp gently and the battle of tears fought within her eyes. The agony of their love.

And so now for her it began as a dumb fascination, which became a comfort, then a need. The silence between them in these late hours could have been deafening to the spectator, but they lived and breathed in these hours. Their love was undeniable, yet denied.

It was in this manner they could be together, though only this. This would someday be different, if only they knew, but for the present it had to be so. She would see him alight on the branch nearest the glass as she dimmed the lights in her room each evening, his feathers a pale sapphire in the glow of the starlight. At some point she had moved her bed so she could look out to him as she lay.

Jareth would stay, sometimes till the sky turned golden with the dawn, though always until he safely saw her drift off. Sarah couldn't sleep without his presence, though she remained unaware of this fact and would no doubt deny such a thing if asked about it. Some nights he stayed just long enough to catch her lips betray her dreams. It was in these moments, unabashedly and unmistakably, and without pretense that he knew her dream flourished within her. But her lips would say, "...not yet..."

Oh the sight it must have been! But who could have known? A girl so transfixed on a silly bird. The dreamer she held captive within her could still see the man where others merely saw an owl. These were precious times, these evenings they shared, a valentine for every dream-filled night. Such things had to be so.

He couldn't deny her these evenings, these trials. The story has already been told, for our Goblin King had fallen in love with this silly girl long before. His arrogant denial might have been his defense, but his actions told otherwise. Jareth would say that such things like persistence are beneath him. Arrogance was not patient and clearly this was patience.

Sarah yet denied their hearts, instead relegating their unspoken bond to the cover of night. Between the stars, she thought of it, though certainly not what he had meant for it to be.

. . .

Six years! Six years this continued and she denied the dreamer and her dreams. So it came one night that he denied her. Sarah's first evening alone, he didn't come to her window. That night she'd waited and waited, the day slowly awakening around her but still she waited.

Now it must be said that no one is quite certain how time passes in the Labyrinth, though it does pass differently there. Not linear as we know it, yet with a peculiar order. Much as the sea in its harmonious turbulence, various currents going this way and that, yet it all flows as one, marching in unison and even still parallel to our own. However you measure it, for him six years felt like an eternity. He had been generous up till now. Something or someone had to give, and so after six years he denied her. And so his languid flights resumed. Boredom, he claimed once again, but we (and even he) knew better. He was searching for hope against hope, impossible odds. It had to be so.


	3. Live without the sunlight

  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own or stake any claim to the Labyrinth or any of its characters, nope not one bit of it. They belong to the Henson Company. 

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**Live without the sunlight**

For six years she denied the dream, yet concurrently held it in her eyes every night. She was stubborn, willful, hot headed and aloof, but she was not ignorant. He was always there, through it all, through the changes, even through the move to college he had been there. And then one day he wasn't. Some nights she even fell asleep against the cool glass. There had been many excuses for this though of course she denied the fact of the matter. It was true that she had never felt more alone, but it was also true that she was willful and stubborn and this drove her further into what she considered 'sensibility'. Dreamers were thinkers, so with her dream lost to her she'd immersed herself fully as she could in thoughts and reason. Surely reason is sensible.

She engrossed herself in her studies, as silly in their sensibility as they come, and as the time flew by, she soon found herself moving on to grad school.

Sarah called her life many things: sensible, realistic, grounded, even mature. Certainly not to be called silly, though that is just what it was. She knew it. She insisted she was no dreamer, but the realist in her could not deny the facts. A silly girl caught up in her silly game. To the rest of the dreamless world she was the picture of reason and practicality. We know better. Sarah, as always, would deny it. The little girl in her never wanted to leave school, for that would mean growing up. Sarah had always thought of grown-ups as dreamless, something she defiantly had refused to be, yet here she was, denying the dream, or so she'd like to think. Rather, she unconsciously kept it in a cruel limbo of indecision.

_'You have no power over me.'_

My, wasn't that the biggest lie she'd ever spoken? Yet she had spat it out years ago with enough conviction to believe it even herself. Now it was her mantra against foolish dreaming, her single and pathetic defense.

# # #

What does a fantastical king of an unknown land do with forever to spare? I suppose it would have been amusing for him to take up common hobbies, the Goblin King collecting stamps? Golfing? He made several half-hearted attempts to occupy himself in his kingdom amongst his subjects.

Can one truly live without sunlight? It would certainly be foolish to try, with an unfortunate predetermination of failure. Jareth was a haughty king now reduced to a piteous fool. This wasn't by his decision, it was simply the way of things, though some things we cannot hope to understand until we've endured them.

So he took to the skies, for his diversion, for his sanity, though we could say for his livelihood. For her. Similar to a magnet and its diametrically opposing forces, yet still part of the whole, one and the same. Neither of them could know or understand, but such things had to be.

What disasters we can make, we suppose we can see clearly when in fact we are blind and arrogant fools. Sarah, of course, willed herself blind while Jareth play-acted superiority and control.


	4. It'll show you your dreams

  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own or stake any claim to the Labyrinth or any of its characters, nope not one bit of it. They belong to the Henson Company. 

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**It'll show you your dreams**

Sarah was now two years into her pursuit of common, dreamless reason. She never welcomed the summer, immersion in her studies was her respite, but summer came nonetheless. These were times she might have otherwise used to get a jump on the coming school year, the odd girl she was. However, this summer she would spend in her former town in her former room, flanked at all sides by the memories she waged the constant battle against these years to escape.

Initially, she managed to avoid the room by any means possible. She even gave it a silly name, _the Room of Doom_, she labeled it facetiously, as if to ease her heavy conscience. If only she could grasp the absurdity of the matter. It was as ridiculous as if to say 'my puppy made me eat my homework'. A puppy would do no such thing, nor could it. And that's completely beside the second point, what on earth would possess you to eat your homework? Are you blind or obtuse? Jareth never made her do anything, never forced her to say anything. When you get down to it, what on earth possessed her to ask such a thing when she obviously was aware of the poor king's circumstances and special gift to her! It would be entirely laughable if it weren't so completely tragic.

Avoiding the room was just another part of her game. She would run every errand imaginable, even conveniently 'forgetting' something so she would have to run out again, just to kill more time. There was never a shortage of housework to be done before her arrival either, and now everything was clean, folded, dusted, disinfected, and in its place. If there was nothing else to be done, she would make sure to fall asleep on the couch, always immersed in something, be it a book or a movie. And then one day she just couldn't escape it any longer.

Her parents figured to turn her room into a guest room, and this especially made sense when she spent so very little of her time in there. Actually, now that they thought of it, did she even go in it at all anymore? Returning from one of the myriad errands one day, she was surprised to find her parents rummaging through her old belongings, cleaning, sorting, and boxing. Essentially demoting what was once her very livelihood down to junk and common clutter. The very thought of this stole her breath. She stammered out a few words of apology for neglecting to do this herself and absolved them of this chore. Honestly she was looking forward to this, but she never let on.

# # #

With each item she recaptured a piece of herself. Everything in this room held for her its own distinct memory. Here, amongst the clutter of dreams cast aside, for anyone to see her heart lay bare, and with each memory she reclaimed that heart softened a touch. She had located a certain book first, and laid it carefully aside for last. Her intent was to avoid this one as long as possible. To this there was a reason. In the reality of things and how hearts work, she would have been too indifferent to it if she'd dealt with this one first, additionally she needed all the time she could afford to it. The hours went by as she carefully and respectfully sorted through each of her childhood treasures and now the time had come.

Sarah stood up and mindlessly brushed off her thighs, as if an invisible layer of dust had collected on them. There might have been if dreams collected dust. Her bed had remained pushed up against the wall, under the window, and there was the book, on a table that been had moved by the door when she'd rearranged her furniture years ago. She sat on her bed, now late into the evening and looked out the window, in her memory seeing the bird who would be king who no longer graced the branches with his presence. With a sigh, she took another look around her silly, childish room, the very corners of her lips curving upward in an ever-so-slight grin. It was small, but it was genuine, and it was most certainly a start. She would sleep here tonight and deal with that book in the morning.

# # #

The sense of urgency and incompletion left her unable to sleep and gave her an early start to the morning, just as the dawn graced her window with the faintest hint of the golden sunlight to soon to follow. If she had turned her eyes a moment sooner she might have caught a sudden movement out the window as she stirred, but she hadn't and she didn't. It was for the best, for both of them.

Dreams sometimes tell us things we might otherwise refuse to acknowledge, they command our attention and we have no choice or say in the matter, but to observe. The events of the previous night laid the groundwork for that night's dreams, though she dreamt not of the stuff she did sort through, but of the one thing she hadn't, the one that broke her heart.

A jumble of memories, sensations, sounds, and feelings, that night she relived her most forsaken dream. In her chosen memory of it things happened differently. She had willed herself to forget key events, things which might make it more difficult to cast off that dream. He sang to her from her memory that night and he held her in his arms, a quite long forgotten event. In his eyes, there too, his heart laid bare, plain as day. It's a pity she ever awoke. She missed being the dreamer!

However, she was also still the thinker. Being a (quite grown-up) dreamer didn't mean casting off reason entirely, and the thinker in her couldn't deny the truth of what transpired between them. It simply wasn't sensible to.

Eight years had been enough.


	5. Fooled hearts

  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own or stake any claim to the Labyrinth or any of its characters, nope not one bit of it. They belong to the Henson Company. 

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**Fooled hearts**

From his now-resumed flights, he saw yet more silly girls carrying on below. None of them would ever be to him what she had become. This isn't surprising, though, because the honest reality of it was that no other could. They had been laid between the stars before either of them could imagine. That book had been for Sarah, and Sarah alone.

Of all the places in this world he could traverse, he chose to remain close to her hometown. Call it what you will. Was he frustrated, sentimental, searching, or hopeful? Jareth was a hopeless fool in love, and so there he waited, though with the pride of a king he called it something else entirely. Here, in this common park, he spent many hours of many days. It was here she first stole his breath. To him it was 'their park', though to this fact she remained unaware. He grinned inwardly at the notion.

There was a little matter to which Jareth was unaware at the moment, and that was Sarah's presence in this town.

He knew she no longer lived here, so he made little attempt to avoid her former bedroom window. He'd watched over the past two years, as what was once so dear grew faded and forgotten. For weeks after her arrival Sarah had avoided that room, and so he had no reason to suspect her sudden presence one night.

That night, an hour before the day broke he alighted on the branch for what should have been a brief glimpse, something just long enough to satisfy him for another day. This night things were different, nothing was in its place, and there she was. He secretly wished her to catch him, and that she would look upon him once more. But this wasn't the time, nor was it the place, and at her faintest stirring in her bed he flew off, though with renewed hope.

# # #

She sat on the little stone bridge in the park, the book on her lap. Sarah didn't actually need to read it or even open the cover. This was an acknowledgement of its existence, of an enormous part of her life and of her heart, of the reality of what transpired, and of him.

Overhead, she noticed a flash of white as it quickly disappeared into the trees nearby. "I watch you, too, you know," she breathed, barely a whisper.

As she settled into her thoughts, Sarah openly reflected on that fateful night for the first time since it had happened. She thought about many things, but more importantly, she thought about him. With the mind of an adult, and the heart of a dreamer, she considered his words. She had play-acted with him hundreds of times in her imagination. Of course, Sarah was always the alluring heroine, relishing the notion of the king fawning over her. To the child she was, he wasn't more than a shallow character who was there to fulfill his role, never considering the reality of him as a man of flesh and blood and a beating heart. Jareth had fulfilled her childish expectations, though now she considered the one occasion she had never play-acted. The dance. His words.

_'I'll lay my love between the stars'_, timeless, beautiful and enduring.

"Love like that doesn't exist but in silly fairy stories," she mused aloud. But she couldn't deny she'd felt something there that night. Something powerful and inexplicable, the gravity of a love she wasn't even aware of.

Still her mind fought against the dreamer, considering the 'sensible'. Things like education, reason, careers, income, a home, a family... She shook her head at her wandering thoughts and decided she'd had enough of this silliness and headed home. Such things were all reasonable, and perfectly sound ideas. Sarah, though, couldn't bring 'ration' and 'sensible' into line with her assumption of having a family some day, the dream of him conflicted with reality. Oh, she _will_ have her dreams. This has already been determined, but they were both oblivious. Everything has its time, and this too shall come.

Sarah returned to the park often to 'reflect' upon her childhood. This was another one of her games. She in fact came to daydream, about her adventures, the silly ways she used to carry on in this very park what felt like a lifetime ago. Every day Jareth watched her from his perch in the grove, his owl eyes catching every detail, every fleck in the emerald forest of her eyes. Not that he was interested in her eyes any longer, surely our king was beyond that. Hardly! But as we know, he truly had been generous and it was now her move. It would have to be another day, though, for this day's sun had already given way to the starlight.

# # #

The next morning Sarah grabbed a couple of textbooks, and instinctually, her little red book as well, and ran out the door. She was to spend the day in the library, immersed in sensible reason and rational thoughts. The past couple weeks had thrown her unduly off-course and the notion was unnerving. So a nice, dull, relaxing, studious day was in order. _Wait, how did 'dull' get in there?_

As disturbing as it may seem, Sarah insisted that this had been an incredibly delightful afternoon. The poor girl was in appalling denial. Somewhere along the walk home, though, things fell into order. The day had begun as a beautiful, crisp morning and now the air was thick with humidity and the sky overcast. Sarah, aware of the impending storm took a shortcut through the woods. As she skirted around a large pond, her gaze shifted to the lovely patterns of light dancing across the shimmering surface. Caught up in the beauty of the pond, her grip loosened and the little red book she was toting slipped from its wedge between the larger textbooks and tumbled into the water.

Without a second thought, now unaware of even the looming storm, she dropped her textbooks on the damp grass and pulled the now sopping book from the water. For Sarah, to lose this book would be to lose the dream entirely. Hoping to salvage it in some way, she examined its pages.

_How could I have been so foolish? I didn't even mean to bring it with me. It's not f..._

Her words were suddenly lost to her as she gasped gently in awe, her brow slightly furrowed. Something wasn't right, though. They were blank, completely and utterly blank. Not as though the water had washed the ink away, there was absolutely no trace there had ever been writing on its yellowed pages.

There was something Sarah didn't realize, though. In her reckless disregard for everything but the dream – her dream, she had made her move.

Leaving the concerns of the day behind on the grass, she made her way to the park, her park - their park.


	6. A love that will last

  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own or stake any claim to the Labyrinth or any of its characters, nope not one bit of it. They belong to the Henson Company.

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**A love that will last**

She came to sit, to read, to ponder, but these were all excuses. She knew Jareth came here as well, she didn't bother with 'why's or 'how's, but accepted the simple knowledge of this fact. It was now her move in this game. Though such matters shouldn't be considered games, she came to the full realization that this was her own creation. The game had begun years go, on a day much like today, with silvery clouds overhead, gathering and churning in an invisible turbulence. She pondered the girl she'd been who came here often to carry on with her silly dreaming. She snorted silently, remembering that he, too, had been here those times, though at the time she couldn't have known he was anything more than what he appeared. That was one of the many lessons she'd learned, _things were not always as they appeared_.

Sarah looked up at the sky as it rumbled in warning, to which she paid no heed.

Memories of that tragic night inundated her mind, the story she'd told the wailing infant, not even mindful of her own words. _Her own words, _she thought. Certain phrases came to mind, _'...had fallen in love with the girl...'_, _'...given her certain powers...'_. Like a bolt the words struck her heart at the realization of the daft fool that child had been!

"Oh what power you have over me, over my heart", she gasped softly. She pretended to say it to the wind, though she knew he was near. She simply knew.

The sky was considerably darker now, the clouds filtering out much of the midday sunlight.

Sarah continued with her thoughts: It was her own foolishness, as she now understood the purpose of those 'certain powers', which he had certainly not intended for wishing away screaming babies. _Go back to your room, Sarah, you've missed the point. _He had done nothing to her that she hadn't asked for. As often as she used to protest and complain about nothing being fair, it was Jareth who'd been dealt the cruel blow of injustice. The arrogant, prideful and insensitive king had his tables turned on him and fallen in love with a wide-eyed, innocent, young girl.

As lightning assailed the landscape behind her, Sarah turned with a gasp, her eyes instead seeing him. No longer any pretense, here was Jareth the man, not the owl. Stoic and solemn, yet his eyes were searching. Full circle. The full spectrum of their torrent relationship hovered in the palpable silence between them. Dream to adversary, now each other's very breath, and they _knew it_, no denials.

"Sarah, beware..." he started, his voice trailing off. He might have given her another one of his shallow threats about his cruelty, but he couldn't threaten her anymore, that was a façade he discarded long ago. _Sarah, beware, _he thought_, I am not without a heart as well_.

The pain belies the endurance of the dream. A silly girl's silly dream was standing (inches) before her. One could cry at the insanity of it!

They stood that way for several minutes, though it could have been hours.

As the storm crescendoed around them, the sky opened up. The deep, cleansing rain washed away the pain, the past, and the world around them. Sarah was crying, but it couldn't have been known in that rain, the same rain that mercifully hid Jareth's own tears as well. They found themselves smiling, smiles that broke into laughter as the rain drenched their hair, their faces, her sensibility and his pride. Strangers... 'til now.

Shaking off the cold brutality of that sensibility, she held out her hand and he gave her his heart.


End file.
